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“REMEMBERING IS DOING” That's Why You and I Are Here Today. We

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“REMEMBERING IS DOING” That's Why You and I Are Here Today. We “REMEMBERING IS DOING” That’s why you and I are here today. We remember during the Shoah (the destruction) there was the “triumph of the human spirit.” In the Scrolls of Fire, Abba Kovner recalls the resistance by the Warsaw Ghetto fighters who, for three months, fought against the Nazis. I want to dedicate my remarks tonight to the Warsaw Ghetto fighters who 57 years ago [today] resisted the Nazis and their collaborators. Abba Kovner writes: Warsaw, April 1943: “On the evening of Passover, the Warsaw ghetto was surrounded. From the lookout I watched the army advancing in columns beside the wall. I saw masses of gleaming helmets in the morning sun, and my heart seemed to stop. I pulled the pin of the grenade and threw it out of the window. From that moment every house in the Warsaw ghetto became a battle position. From the windows, on every floor, fire was poured on the Germans and the Ukrainians. Deborah stood in the window above me. A soldier noticed her and shouted to his friend as if shocked; ‘Look, Hans, a Jewish woman with a gun!’ They aimed their rifles at her, but Deborah was quicker. She threw a grenade at them; the only one she had.” Warsaw, April 23, 1943. “Every night seas of flame raged and tongues of fire circled above the Warsaw ghetto. House after house collapsed, and the sky took on a frightening light. And nearby, beyond the wall, life continued as usual. The Citizens of the Polish capital went for strolls, amused themselves and saw the smoke thick by day and a pillar of fire by night. There were some who dared to come close to the ghetto wall to get a better look at ‘how the Jews burn!’ And when the wind carried the flames and set fire to a house on the other side of the wall, firemen rushed there at once. Only our fire has no one to put it out” Warsaw, April 25, 1943 (Commander Mordechei Anielewicz’ Farewell) “I don’t know what to tell you. Something has happened that is beyond our most daring dreams. The German Nazis have been driven out of the Ghetto. .For three days the Ghetto has been trapped in flames. Tonight we are changing to guerilla warfare. .I can’t describe our present conditions. Only a few will survive; everyone else will perish sooner or later. Our fate is sealed. In the bunkers you can’t light a candle for lack of air. 2 . .Goodbye, dear friend, the last wish of my life has been fulfilled. I have been privileged to see Jewish defense in the ghetto, in all its greatness and glory.” What happened in the Warsaw uprising that spring of 1943 will forever remain a re-affirmation of life, a pleas for human dignity. The heroes of the Warsaw Ghetto had no choice between life and death but to die in dignity fighting for life. The Holocaust is the darkest single period of human history; the Holocaust is the systematic isolation, persecution, and destruction of eleven million people— Poles, Romanies (gypsies,) homosexuals, physically and mentally handicapped, priests, nuns, political dissidents, and intellectuals, all labeled “enemies of the State.” Six million Jews during the Hitler era (1933-1945) were annihilated! Hitler and the Nazis waged a special war against the Jews—a kind of wardwithin the larger World War II. Elie Wiesel (a survivor) told us a few years ago; “Not all victims were Jews. But all Jews were victims.” The Nazis used the formula “The Final Solution” to refer to the determined destruction of all Jews within Europe. The Holocaust means “fully burnt”. The Hebrew name “Shoah”, meaning “utterly destroyed,” explicitly states what the Nazis did to the Jews of Europe. We can describe three phases in the history of the Holocaust—the Shoah, namely: 1. 1933-1939: The isolation of the Jews in Germany and Austria 3 2. 1939-1942: Ghettoization of Eastern Europe 3. 1942-1945: The mass murder of Europe’s Jews PHASE 1: 1933-1939 - Isolation From Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 to the invasion of Poland in 1939, the Nazis’ policy was to completely isolate the Jews. This was done by segregating Jews from every aspect of German life—social, economic and political. The Nazi State, in September 1935, passed the Nuremberg Laws, which forbade citizenship to Jews and deprived Jews of their status as Germans. The definition of a Jew was, “A Jew was any person, three of whose great-grandparents had been Jews.” Jews were steadily pauperized as their property and assets were confiscated or forcibly transferred to the State or to private German ownership. Nazi policy toward Jews was meant to pressure Jews to leave Germany. In fact, nearly ½ of Germany’s 500,000 Jews left by 1939. On November 9, 1938, organized gangs of Nazis attached Jewish synagogues, homes and businesses in Germany, Austria and Sudentenland. On this night, known as Kristallnacht, “The Night of Shattered Glass,” over 100 Jews were slaughtered, 30,000 Jews arrested and locked in concentration camps. 4 By and large, the outside world remained silent regarding the suffering inflicted upon German/Austrian Jews. An international conference convened at Evian in the summer of 1938 did nothing to help Jewish refugees. PHASE 2: 1938-1942: Ghettoization On September 1, 1939 Germany invaded Poland. Jews had been in Poland since the 12th century. In 1939 Poland had the largest Jewish population. Jews again were the target of “the Nazis War against the Jews.” Jews were thrown into ghettos all over Poland, all over Europe. These temporary gathering points (ghettos) were set up in the poorer sections of major cities and sealed off from the non-Jewish society. Here the Nazis attempted to starve and/or work the Jews to death. Yes, overcrowding, coupled with hunger, disease and terror devastated the ghettos. The Nazis tried to completely demoralize Jews. The outside world continued to look on and do nothing! Apathy and indifference marked the world outside! In three weeks the Nazis swallowed Poland, then Denmark, Norway, Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France. The Balkan countries followed. The world, including the Vatican, remained silent. PHASE 3: 1942-1945: mass murder Jews were left to stagnate—to starve, to die in the ghettos. While Jews therein attempted to cope and/or exist, the Nazis experimented with mass killings 5 in Eastern Europe. Special units, knows as Einsatzgruppen, traveled at the front with the regular German army. Sweeping into cities, towns and villages, these “killing squads” rounded up the Jewish population with the forced help of Jews themselves. Jews were herded into trucks and freight cars, taken outside the towns to some ravine or ditch, stripped of their valuables and clothing—men, women and children—and shot! The countryside became one immense graveyard and the ground drenched with blood such as the place of Babi Yar in Russia where over 100,000 Jewish men, women and children were slaughtered. Other methods were used—mass drownings, burnings, the gassings in mobile gas vans/trucks. WE REMEMBER! WE RECALL! One such massacre recorded by Jaffa Illiach: “On Rosh Hashanah, 1941 when all Jews awaited their fate in the sthetl’s synagogues, watched over by lunatics whom their Lithuanian captors had appointed as their supervisors, it was clear to Rabbi Shimon Rozowsky that his beloved shtetl was doomed. A few days earlier he had called the town’s notables together and gave them this warning: ‘Jews, our end is near; our fate is sealed. But let us die notably, with honor. Let us NOT walk as sheep to the slaughter. Secure ammunition, we will fight to our last breath. Let us die like judges in Israel.’ Some supported him, but the opposition won out. 6 Then it was too late! From the synagogue, Jews were led out in groups of 250; first the men, then the women and children. They were driven by the Nazis to the old Jewish cemetery; told to dig their ditches. All had to undress and stand at the edge of the open “graves.” The Jews were shot in the back of their heads by Lithuanian guards with the encouragement of the local people. Seven thousand were shot that September 25, 1941. One of the shtetl’s teachers, Reb. Michalowsky and his youngest son, Zvi, age 16, were holding hands as they stood at the edge of the open pit. They were trying comfort each other. Young Zvi fell into the grave along with his father who had been shot. Zvi felt the bodies piling up on top of him, covering him. He felt the streams of blood around him and the trembling pile of dying bodies moving beneath him. It became dark and cold; the shooting stopped. Zvi made his way from the bodies—from the pit—the mass grave into the cold dark, dead night. Zvi knew the area. At the far end of the cemetery, near a church, were a few Christian homes. Naked, covered with blood, Zvi knocked on the first door. The door opened; a peasant held up a lamp to see who knocked. 7 “Please let me in,” Zvi pleaded. The woman shouted, “Jews, go back to the grave where you belong!” She slammed the door. Zvi knocked on other doors; there was no room in these inns! Near the forest lived a widow whom Zvi knew. He tried again, but this time he changed his story. The widow opened the door and when she saw the nude body covered with blood, she grabbed a piece of burning wood to chase Zvi away.
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